Index Holdings, the company that owns Atlus, maker of Persona, Catherine and Shin Megami Tensei, is to sell off its operations as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. The asset transfer may reach as much as ¥15 billion (about $150 million); the Index debt has been estimated at $244 million. Bidding could start as early as next week, and the idea is to get everything over and done with by September, before the assets start to significantly devalue, as panic starts to set in. Index will be delisted from the JASDAC on July 28th.

"The development and sales of the Atlus brand as well as the consumer business will continue," claims Atlus in a statement. Planned game releases will go ahead as scheduled, and the hope is that the ongoing issues with Index won't impact Atlus significantly. That said, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where Atlus isn't impacted at all by the Index implosion; we just don't know how, or how much. A great deal will depend on who ends up owning Atlus at the end of all this.

It is alleged that the Index bankruptcy comes as a result of fraud, in which sales number were overstated to fool investors. That investigation is still ongoing.

Halyah:Well crap. I hope this doesn't lead to bad things or that someone we don't want anywhere near them ends up picking them up. >_>

Hey, don't worry. Worst case scenario you have a bunch of games to look back on when Modern Persona 15: Kill Russians [Press A to win Edition] comes out with its season pass. All I have is a couple of Thiefs and System Shocks.

I have a feeling that XSEED is going to try something, either by using their own money/ getting a loan or through crowdfunding. I mean, they're the main force in publishing excellent but obscure JRPGs to Western markets, and they're possibly the best fit of all the publishers who could buy them.

Dr.Awkward:I have a feeling that XSEED is going to try something, either by using their own money/ getting a loan or through crowdfunding. I mean, they're the main force in publishing excellent but obscure JRPGs to Western markets, and they're possibly the best fit of all the publishers who could buy them.

A good idea, but honestly... if you want a true pair-up that JRPG fans would absolutely gush over? Imagine if NIS bought Atlus? Imagine a Persona/Disgaea crossover?

Dr.Awkward:I have a feeling that XSEED is going to try something, either by using their own money/ getting a loan or through crowdfunding. I mean, they're the main force in publishing excellent but obscure JRPGs to Western markets, and they're possibly the best fit of all the publishers who could buy them.

A good idea, but honestly... if you want a true pair-up that JRPG fans would absolutely gush over? Imagine if NIS bought Atlus? Imagine a Persona/Disgaea crossover?

NIS would be a great fit IMO. Though, they don't really have a lot of cash to throw around.

Nintendo needs to be the ones that buy Atlus. I feel that any other company will screw Atlus up. Yes, all of Atlus's stuff will become Nintendo Exclusive, which would suck for a lot of people, but they're the only ones who would leave Atlus alone.

Lots of little things will end up to MASSIVE debt in little to no time at all.

Hell, a number of restaurant owners I have talked to have gone up to a million into the red before starting to get into the black, and that is with a single restaurant! Now imagine a much larger company, and...oy..

Halyah:Well crap. I hope this doesn't lead to bad things or that someone we don't want anywhere near them ends up picking them up. >_>

Hey, don't worry. Worst case scenario you have a bunch of games to look back on when Modern Persona 15: Kill Russians [Press A to win Edition] comes out with its season pass. All I have is a couple of Thiefs and System Shocks.

I don't think Activision or EA is gunning for Atlus... Granted given how both tend to behave, EA more so the past year or two, it wouldn't surprise me. Hopefully someone who doesn't bug them or interfere with them picks them up.

From the other articles leading up to this, I think this is a higher level than some thing like the THQ or any other publisher sale. Since Atlus is a publisher and fairly large, it is them as a whole being sold not a dissolving.

We'll see how this goes down; in all honesty I can't see ANYBODY major buying Atlus due to being on the threshold of the new gen, so a LOT of pubs are sinking money into those. All the big names in Japan have issues (CAPCOM just laid off people from its US branch, SEGA's had money trouble for awhile, Konami has no freaking clue how to make games internally, Square Enix is a GIANT clusterfuck right now, and Sony had to sell off TWO headquarters in order to make the black). I suppose Namco-Bandai is a possibility, but even then I can't see it. Marvelous Entertainment might be able to, but we'll see. Nintendo could definitely do so due to their absurd reserves, but that's also questionable. The thing about buying a company is that you have to also take on their debts as WELL as their assets as well as be responsible for the employees you now have in one way or another. And that's BEFORE getting into the international branches. This is definitely going to be an ass-clencher

You want Valve, almost entirely a PC oriented publisher (and given they only really self publish and they barely do that anyway its hard to consider them even that) to buy a publisher that almost exclusively works on JRPG's?

What could that possibly hope to accomplish?

I echo the NIS hope though. I get they don't have the money to throw at it, especially what will probably amount to a very large amount of money, but one can dream.

As for Nintendo, eh. Probably not. Atlus doesn't exactly have any extremely risque titles, but a lot of its stuff doesn't exactly fit the mold of what generally would be considered Nintendo stuff. Granted they did pick up Bayonetta 2...so that could work out as a fallback.

I believe that it would be in Nintendo's best interests to pickup Atlus. Seeing as Nintendo is already doing a crossover project with the company doing Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, it would be in Nintendo's best interests to support them.

Mr Dizazta:I believe that it would be in Nintendo's best interests to pickup Atlus. Seeing as Nintendo is already doing a crossover project with the company doing Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, it would be in Nintendo's best interests to support them.

Only problem with this is that Atlus will be stripped of the freedom to develop on other consoles, only Nintendo ones, which would suck for fans that simply don't want a Wii-U or 3DS.

I agree with Nero that NIS or XSeed would be the better choice, I would prefer Atlus be given more freedom to develop on any console they want than being restricted.

Nintendo's sitting on what? 21 billion dollars or so, from their Wii warchest of cash? Go Nintendo I say. They've got the pockets for it more than anyone else. It'd be a good fit and great exclusive for them to have business wise.

Mr Dizazta:I believe that it would be in Nintendo's best interests to pickup Atlus. Seeing as Nintendo is already doing a crossover project with the company doing Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, it would be in Nintendo's best interests to support them.

Only problem with this is that Atlus will be stripped of the freedom to develop on other consoles, only Nintendo ones, which would suck for fans that simply don't want a Wii-U or 3DS.

I agree with Nero that NIS or XSeed would be the better choice, I would prefer Atlus be given more freedom to develop on any console they want than being restricted.

I am not disagreeing that those would be better choices, facts just point to who has the most money at this point. Not to mention, Nintendo buying Atlus would mean more hardcore exclusive titles would be coming to Nintendo consoles, something the Nintendo has been sorely lacking.

Mr Dizazta:I believe that it would be in Nintendo's best interests to pickup Atlus. Seeing as Nintendo is already doing a crossover project with the company doing Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, it would be in Nintendo's best interests to support them.

Only problem with this is that Atlus will be stripped of the freedom to develop on other consoles, only Nintendo ones, which would suck for fans that simply don't want a Wii-U or 3DS.

I agree with Nero that NIS or XSeed would be the better choice, I would prefer Atlus be given more freedom to develop on any console they want than being restricted.

I am not disagreeing that those would be better choices, facts just point to who has the most money at this point. Not to mention, Nintendo buying Atlus would mean more hardcore exclusive titles would be coming to Nintendo consoles, something the Nintendo has been sorely lacking.

Exclusive titles that were on other consoles before and that many other Atlus fans do not have nor would want tpo purchase a whole exclusive console for that game. The main thing is that if either Sony or Nintendo were to purchase the company then they'd be effectively locking out on half of their fanbase from the other due to the fact that now all the games are on one console. Atlus' ability to develop for any platform has been great for them because then everyone can experience their games. That's why them getting purchased by 3rd party would be better, as long as it isn't Capcom or Square Enix, and in a perfect world it would be the best if they could self-publish.Plus think of it this way, if Atlus were bought by Nintendo what would happen to Persona 5, and if Sony bought Atlus what would happen to Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei. Both of those outcomes would have much to lose.

Exclusive titles that were on other consoles before and that many other Atlus fans do not have nor would want tpo purchase a whole exclusive console for that game. The main thing is that if either Sony or Nintendo were to purchase the company then they'd be effectively locking out on half of their fanbase from the other due to the fact that now all the games are on one console. Atlus' ability to develop for any platform has been great for them because then everyone can experience their games. That's why them getting purchased by 3rd party would be better, as long as it isn't Capcom or Square Enix, and in a perfect world it would be the best if they could self-publish.Plus think of it this way, if Atlus were bought by Nintendo what would happen to Persona 5, and if Sony bought Atlus what would happen to Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei. Both of those outcomes would have much to lose.

Persona 5 at least could theoretically make the transition to Wii U. Franchises have jumped ship to other consoles before *cough* Final Fantasy *cough*

SMTxFire Emblem would be dead in the water though. One of those franchises is pure Nintendo, and there's no way they'd let that go onto a competitor's console. That project would get killed dead.

Exclusive titles that were on other consoles before and that many other Atlus fans do not have nor would want tpo purchase a whole exclusive console for that game. The main thing is that if either Sony or Nintendo were to purchase the company then they'd be effectively locking out on half of their fanbase from the other due to the fact that now all the games are on one console. Atlus' ability to develop for any platform has been great for them because then everyone can experience their games. That's why them getting purchased by 3rd party would be better, as long as it isn't Capcom or Square Enix, and in a perfect world it would be the best if they could self-publish.Plus think of it this way, if Atlus were bought by Nintendo what would happen to Persona 5, and if Sony bought Atlus what would happen to Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei. Both of those outcomes would have much to lose.

Persona 5 at least could theoretically make the transition to Wii U. Franchises have jumped ship to other consoles before *cough* Final Fantasy *cough*

SMTxFire Emblem would be dead in the water though. One of those franchises is pure Nintendo, and there's no way they'd let that go onto a competitor's console. That project would get killed dead.

Problem though could be the disc size in that sense because for some reason Nintendo only developed a special drive that could only read single layered Nintendo Optical discs instead of dual layered ones. That leaves a 25GB gap between the Sony Bluray discs and the Wii U Optical Discs. It's really jarring to me that they did that despite the fact that Nintendo worked with Panasonic on the Wii U's Optical disc and they were the ones who worked with Sony to develop the current bluray dics we use today. It makes no sense at all because Sony doesn't have exclusive holdings on those discs because the Xbox One will have dual layered bluray discs as well.

Final Fantasy was never exclusive to Nintendo either, and the reason they jumped was because the size of discs that the PS1 had were larger than the cartridges that Nintendo had. A Nintendo 64 cartridge could hold up to 64 MB of space, while the CDs that Sony was using could hold up to 194 MB of space. So let us take FF VII for example, it was on 4 discs for the PS1 which if we were to total it, and assuming they used all 194 MB on all discs, then the game totals to a size of 776 MB, and if it were to be put on the N64 that would require at least 11 cartridges so the production costs would be too much and Square Soft would have had to spend more on it. That's not including the fact that the graphics would have to be tweaked to take up more size since the PS1 was a 32-bit system when compared to the N64 being a 64-bit system.

Then when Nintendo finally got into making CDs they developed their own brand of discs and drive, the Nintendo Optical Drive and Disc. However, Sony was using a DVD drive with DVDs and again we have a problem with disc space. The GameCube's disc could only hold up to 1.4 GBs when compared to Sony's DVDs which could hold up to 4.7 GBs. So to fit a game on the disc Square Soft would either have to spend more on discs and split of the game, or possibly cut out content which they wouldn't want to do. That's why none of the numbered FF games showed up on the GameCube or the Wii. Because finally when the Wii Optical Disc was made it could only hold up to 4.7 GBs, the amount of a PS2, but by then Sony was using Bluray discs which at the time were only 25 GBs, but since they had a bluray player inside them the PS3 could also read dual layered discs as well.

Really what I'm getting at with this is that disc space has always been an issue with Nintendo later on and while you can tailor it for the console it'd take more time and money then what Square wanted to pay when compared to how easily they could port the games over. Plus Nintendo could have easily developed a drive doing so seeing as the Wii U optical disc is a modified version of the Wii's Optical disc. Really it's a design choice that baffles me.

Mr.Mattress:Nintendo needs to be the ones that buy Atlus. I feel that any other company will screw Atlus up. Yes, all of Atlus's stuff will become Nintendo Exclusive, which would suck for a lot of people, but they're the only ones who would leave Atlus alone.

If Nintendo got a hold of Atlus a lot of us would be screwed. The Wii U sucks and no ones buying it... if they got Atlus no one would play the games and the brand would be folded. We don't need a console maker to buy Atlus, we need a 3rd part developer to do so,one that's muli-platformer, not console exclusive so every one can play the games and they sell enough units of the game s to justify more games.

Andy Shandy:So whoever, if anyone, were to buy Atlus, they'd get all of it I assume, since it's the company higher up the chain that is going bankrupt?

yep ,basically the "corporate person" who was the owner of Atlus company or w/e their real corporate name is (really, sometime they are nothing like their title names), is selling it off since its belly up. Atlas is staying whole, but its fiturei s questionable. as the new owners may use their chain of command to do anything, they can thoeretically even close it down after buying it, but then why buy it to begin with.

Mr.Mattress:Nintendo needs to be the ones that buy Atlus. I feel that any other company will screw Atlus up. Yes, all of Atlus's stuff will become Nintendo Exclusive, which would suck for a lot of people, but they're the only ones who would leave Atlus alone.

If nintendo buys it im going to completely loose any interest in Atlus.

Neronium:[quote="j-e-f-f-e-r-s" post="7.822528.19899301"]Problem though could be the disc size in that sense because for some reason Nintendo only developed a special drive that could only read single layered Nintendo Optical discs instead of dual layered ones. That leaves a 25GB gap between the Sony Bluray discs and the Wii U Optical Discs. It's really jarring to me that they did that despite the fact that Nintendo worked with Panasonic on the Wii U's Optical disc and they were the ones who worked with Sony to develop the current bluray dics we use today. It makes no sense at all because Sony doesn't have exclusive holdings on those discs because the Xbox One will have dual layered bluray discs as well.

It really wont be a problem for Nintendo this coming generation at least because a game that is small enough for WiiU hardware to actually run it and long enough to take 25gb would be a wonder to see. They simply cant run that "30GB of graphics" shiny titles as WiiU wont be able to run them anyway.

Mr.Mattress:Nintendo needs to be the ones that buy Atlus. I feel that any other company will screw Atlus up. Yes, all of Atlus's stuff will become Nintendo Exclusive, which would suck for a lot of people, but they're the only ones who would leave Atlus alone.

If Nintendo got a hold of Atlus a lot of us would be screwed. The Wii U sucks and no ones buying it... if they got Atlus no one would play the games and the brand would be folded. We don't need a console maker to buy Atlus, we need a 3rd part developer to do so,one that's muli-platformer, not console exclusive so every one can play the games and they sell enough units of the game s to justify more games.

Isn't that kinda the point though? As a company, Nintendo needs to get people to buy their hardware and software exclusivity accomplishes that. Atlus doesn't exactly make AAA gaming and Nintendo's hardware offers more than enough power for what Atlus needs. If Nintendo could round up a few more studios along with Atlus, they could very well turn around their hardware problems.

Mr Dizazta:I believe that it would be in Nintendo's best interests to pickup Atlus. Seeing as Nintendo is already doing a crossover project with the company doing Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, it would be in Nintendo's best interests to support them.

Only problem with this is that Atlus will be stripped of the freedom to develop on other consoles, only Nintendo ones, which would suck for fans that simply don't want a Wii-U or 3DS.

I agree with Nero that NIS or XSeed would be the better choice, I would prefer Atlus be given more freedom to develop on any console they want than being restricted.

But at the same time would Atlus do very well on their own? I heard NIS isn't exactly swimming in enough cash themselves.

Mr Dizazta:I believe that it would be in Nintendo's best interests to pickup Atlus. Seeing as Nintendo is already doing a crossover project with the company doing Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, it would be in Nintendo's best interests to support them.

Only problem with this is that Atlus will be stripped of the freedom to develop on other consoles, only Nintendo ones, which would suck for fans that simply don't want a Wii-U or 3DS.

I agree with Nero that NIS or XSeed would be the better choice, I would prefer Atlus be given more freedom to develop on any console they want than being restricted.

But at the same time would Atlus do very well on their own? I heard NIS isn't exactly swimming in enough cash themselves.

You'd be surprised. The worst thing that could happen to a company that has been for all consoles suddenly becoming exclusive to one will rustle many jimmies as it's not a good thing. It's a lose-lose if Nintendo were to buy it because what would happen to Persona 5 which is more than likely already in development and then there is the fact that there have been no Persona games on a Nintendo system so many people won't know what's going on. Meanwhile, if Sony were to buy them then what would happen to Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei as I highly doubt Sony would let it continue development. Plus the fact that Atlus USA are the ones who help localize the Disgaea games to the US and there is a new one that is coming, and Nintendo, while they have been getting better, still has a terrible time with localization times and region locking, which would also lock people out who import because a lot of people import Atlus games.Finally, it would tear a lot of the Atlus community apart given with how many comments around the net are, and also assuming that Dokapon Kingdom fans haven't already killed each other. >.>

Really in the best world Atlus would be able to self-publish, but NIS could still take a hit and bring in a bread winner. It all depends really.

If Nintendo got a hold of Atlus a lot of us would be screwed. The Wii U sucks and no ones buying it... if they got Atlus no one would play the games and the brand would be folded. We don't need a console maker to buy Atlus, we need a 3rd part developer to do so,one that's muli-platformer, not console exclusive so every one can play the games and they sell enough units of the game s to justify more games.[/quote]

Isn't that kinda the point though? As a company, Nintendo needs to get people to buy their hardware and software exclusivity accomplishes that. Atlus doesn't exactly make AAA gaming and Nintendo's hardware offers more than enough power for what Atlus needs. If Nintendo could round up a few more studios along with Atlus, they could very well turn around their hardware problems.[/quote]

Yeah except people arent stupid enough to buy a wii U just to play games like Persona 5. as much as i love the Persona series i know i wouldn't shell out money to play one game..the wii u will obsolete in around a year's time after the PS4 and xbone are out for a while anyways